Turkey vowed on Friday to keep its doors open to ethnic Uighur migrants fleeing persecution in China, a stance likely to exacerbate Ankara’s row with Beijing over its treatment of the largely Muslim, Turkic-language speaking minority.<\/p>\n
Fri Jul 3, 2015 12:13pm EDT
ANKARA | By Tulay Karadeniz<\/p>\n
Turkey vowed on Friday to keep its doors open to ethnic Uighur migrants fleeing persecution in China, a stance likely to exacerbate Ankara’s row with Beijing over its treatment of the largely Muslim, Turkic-language speaking minority.<\/p>\n
U.S.-based Radio Free Asia reported that 173 Uighur women and children had arrived in Istanbul this week from Thailand, where they had been detained for more than a year by immigration authorities for illegal entry.<\/p>\n
Turkish foreign ministry spokesman Tanju Bilgic declined to comment on the report, but said Ankara would continue to welcome its “Uighur brothers”, citing “cultural and historical bonds”.<\/p>\n
“Turkey is keeping its doors open for Uighurs who have arrived or want to come to our doors,” he told a news conference.<\/p>\n
Reuters was not able to independently verify the Radio Free Asia report.<\/p>\n
However, Worasit Piriyawiboon, a Thai lawyer who previously represented a family believed to have been Uighurs, told Reuters that more than 170 Uighurs had left Thailand on Monday on a “secret charter flight” provided by Turkey.<\/p>\n
China’s treatment of the Uighurs, who live in the far western region of Xinjiang, is an important issue for many Turks, who see themselves as sharing a common cultural and religious background.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week Turkey angered China by expressing concern about reports of restrictions on Muslim Uighurs worshipping and fasting during the holy month of Ramadan.<\/p>\n
Beijing denied restricting religious freedoms and demanded that Turkey clarify its statements.<\/p>\n
Ramadan has become a sensitive time in Xinjiang following a rise in attacks blamed by Beijing on Islamist militants over the past three years. Hundreds have died in the violence.<\/p>\n
China is home to about 20 million Muslims spread across its vast territory, only a portion of whom are Uighur.<\/p>\n
(Additional reporting by Ece Toksabay in Ankara; Ben Blanchard and Adam Rose in Beijing and Amy Sawitta Lefevre in Bangkok; Writing by David Dolan<\/a>; Editing by Nick Tattersall<\/a> and Gareth Jones<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Turkey vowed on Friday to keep its doors open to ethnic Uighur migrants fleeing persecution in China, a stance likely to exacerbate Ankara’s row with Beijing over its treatment of the largely Muslim, Turkic-language speaking minority.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1931,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-1932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1932"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=1932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}